Running Scared (14 page)

Daegan hated him.

Mary Ellen’s voice was weak and she stood in her best green dress, her hair washed and brushed, her eyes glistening. “I—I don’t understand,” she said but everyone in the room knew it was a lie.

“Ma, forget it.”

“Sure you do, babe. You understand, you just don’t want to admit it. All these years you’ve been sitting here waiting for something to happen between me and Maureen, but even if it did, nothing would change.” A muscle in Frank’s jaw was jumping wildly, like a caged beast hurling itself at the gate. “I’ll make it clear for you, so that even you can get the picture. Maureen will put up with you and him”—he pointed a blunt finger at Daegan—“as long as you know your place, keep quiet, stay away from the house and from my kids. She doesn’t care if I screw my brains out with you or anyone else—”

Mary Ellen gave a little squeak of protest.

“But she doesn’t want it thrown in her face. So you and your kid better not—”

“Stop,” Daegan growled, turning on the man who had sired him.

“Say what, boy?”

“I said stop yelling at my mother and get out.”

“Daegan, no,” Mary Ellen warned.

“Me
get out? Now, that’s funny. Real funny.” Frank shook his head as if he couldn’t understand the boy’s stupidity. “I have news for you, kid. I pay for this place. That’s right. I pay for the rent, your schooling, and buy your ma a new dress or underwear whenever she needs it. I’m good to her.”

“Bull.”

Frank took a step toward him. “Mary Ellen, you’d better shut your boy up.”

“Get out,” Daegan said, not budging. He was closer than he’d ever been to his father and he wasn’t backing down. Not this time.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Of course you aren’t, Frank,” Mary Ellen said, reaching for his arm. “You just got here, honey.”

Daegan’s stomach churned and his fists clenched at his sides.

Frank shook Mary Ellen’s clinging hands away. “You know, boy, I can do what I damn well please because not only can I kick both of your sorry asses out of here, but I can fire your ma as well, make sure she gets no references so that no one else will hire her. I can do that—make your lives a living hell.”

“You already have,” Daegan said, unable to control his tongue.

“You ungrateful little shit, I should whip you into showing some respect!”

“And I should cut off your balls.”

“No! Oh, God, no! Don’t, Daegan, don’t do this,” Mary Ellen begged. “You don’t know what you’re saying.” Then she turned to Frank. “He’s just a boy.”

“Yeah, and he needs to learn a lesson I should’ve taught him a long time ago.”

“No, no, no. Stop. Please, just stop,” she whispered. Mary Ellen was crying now, huddled in a corner, tears and black mascara running down her face, but Daegan couldn’t control the rage that had been burning in him for years.

He hurled himself at Frank Sullivan, his body slamming into that of his father. They reeled against the wall. A chair flew out of the way. Frank bellowed. Mary Ellen screamed.

“You little prick!” Frank’s body was hard and heavy, honed from hours working out in a gym. His fist crashed into Daegan’s face, then a left cross connected, snapping Daegan’s head backward and sending him spinning to bounce off the wall. Plaster cracked. His mother wailed. The metallic taste of blood filled Daegan’s throat.

“Stop!” Mary Ellen cried. “Please, Frank, for the love of God!”

Stunned, Daegan rounded and tried to land another blow, but Frank came at him with two left jabs to the stomach. Daegan doubled over and Frank kicked him hard between the legs. Pain, like fire, roared through his crotch. He bit back a scream, fought the tears that burned in his eyes. Spitting blood, his head and groin throbbing, he staggered to his feet and stood on rubbery legs.

“Daegan, don’t. Frank, please—” Mary Ellen was sobbing loudly and hysterically as Frank, his eyes burning like hot coals, advanced on his son.

“I should have done this a long time ago, kept you in line. Your ma sure as hell didn’t.”

“So come on,” Daegan encouraged, his mouth already swelling. “You’ve wanted to for years.”

“You stupid kid.”

“Come on!” Daegan swung at his father, but Frank ducked.

“Oh, God, no, please—Frank, baby, don’t,” Mary Ellen pleaded.

“I tried to talk her out of havin’ you, ya know,” Frank swore. “There was a doctor who would have helped us out of the jam we were in, but the damned church doesn’t believe in abortion and I’m not riskin’ goin’ to hell, not for the likes of you. But you,” he said, breathing hard and staring at Mary Ellen, “you should have given him up, like I told you. Saved us both a lot of embarrassment.”

“Screw you!” Daegan yelled.

“Oh, you have, kid. And let me tell you this, so you’d better get it straight. You are not and never will be my son. Let me put all this in terms you’ll understand so that we’ll be clear on it, okay? Your mother, she’s my whore.”

“Oh, no, Frank, you don’t mean it,” Mary Ellen said, then stared at Daegan. “This is all because you’ve riled him up.”

Frank wasn’t finished. “She does what I want when I want and how I want. A good woman. Knows her place. I take care of her and she appreciates it.” He said it as if he meant it, as if he really cared about her in his own weird way. “But you, you’ve been a pain in the butt since the day you were born. Nothin’ I can do about it, but you stay away from my kids. Do what you want with Robert’s, but keep away from mine.”

“You stay away from my ma.”

“Daegan, no!” Mary Ellen wailed.

“What?” Frank said. “Don’t you get it, kid? Without me, your ma’s nothin’, just a pretty woman who’s getting older—a woman who no other decent man would look at because of her useless kid. If it wasn’t me keeping her, it would have to be some other guy—someone who might not be as nice as me. She’d be another man’s whore.”

Daegan came around again, this time landing a bone-crushing blow to Frank’s face that jarred him up his entire arm. Blood sprayed from Frank’s nose. With a shriek of pain and outrage, Frank let loose, pummeling Daegan’s belly so hard he heard his ribs crack. Like a bloodied heavyweight contender, Frank landed blow after blow, ignoring Mary Ellen’s screams and the sounds of voices outside.

Daegan spat on his father.

Frank swore and grabbed him by the front of his jacket. “You dumb little bastard.”

“Frank, don’t, oh, dear God, don’t!” His mother was sobbing.

Crack! Pain seared through Daegan’s face as his father’s fist slammed into his nose and blood spurted. Daegan spun back against the wall and slithered to the floor. “Don’t get up,” Frank, breathing hard, ordered.

Daegan struggled to his hands and knees and his mother screamed.

“You never learn, do ya kid?”

Breathing hard, Frank hauled Daegan to his feet. His legs were like jelly and Frank laughed. “Yeah, you’re not as tough as you think you are.”

His mother was out of the corner and clinging on her lover’s arm, wailing, trying to keep Frank from hitting Daegan again. “For the love of God, Frank, don’t hurt him. He’s your son, your flesh and blood.”

“Humph.” Eyes deep with rage burned into Daegan. “Then it’s my duty to show you your place. Now, you miserable punk, if you ever so much as look at me or my family again, I’ll kill you.”

“Try,” Daegan goaded through teeth that rattled and he spit again, a bloody wad of spittle splashing Frank in the face.

Frank’s fist balled and blasted into Daegan’s face. Daegan dropped to the floor.

Mary Ellen shrieked. “You’ve killed him, oh, God, Frank, look what you’ve done! Baby, oh, baby.” She was on her knees beside Daegan, touching him, her tears splashing on him.

“Leave him alone,” Frank ordered.

“But he’s hurt—”

“I said, leave him alone.”

Blackness threatened to overtake Daegan. He saw his father yank his mother to her feet. “Now I came here for a reason. Let’s get to it.”

“I can’t. Not now—Daegan needs a doctor.” She was white and scared and it was all Daegan could do to stay conscious. “We have to help him.”

“You have to take care of me,” he reminded her. “The kid’ll be okay. He’s out of control, Mary Ellen, he needed to be taught a lesson.”

“No, Frank, I can’t—”

He lifted her off her feet and staggered into the bedroom. “I hear ‘no’ at home,” he said, throwing her into the room and slamming the door behind him; but still the ugly words seeped through the door. “From you, I expect ‘yes’ and ‘whatever you want, baby.’”

“But Daegan—”

Slap! The sound echoed through the room and was chased by a horrifying shriek. “Frank, don’t!” Slap. Another wail.

Daegan dragged himself to his feet, spitting and coughing and thinking of the gun that he’d hidden in the mattress of the hide-a-bed. His mother was screaming and Frank was spouting obscenities. “The boy will be all right, but the sooner you take care of me, the quicker we can call a doctor.”

“No, no, no!”

Slap! “Undress.”

“Frank, what’s happened? We have to see about Daegan—”

Slap! Thunk. “I said take your clothes off, goddamn it, or you’ll get the beating of your life!”

“You wouldn’t,” she said, her voice quavering in fear. Daegan wanted to throw up. He struggled to his knees and wretched up blood.

“Don’t, don’t, don’t, please, no—” she screamed and fabric tore.

“You’re in for the fuck of your life, baby,” Frank snarled.

Daegan, fighting the blinding pain, crawled to his bed. He reached the couch and felt up inside the frame where he’d taped the gun. His mother screamed and sobbed. Head pounding, he didn’t think of anything other than he had to end it. Once and for all. They couldn’t go on this way. Now or never.

Slap! Flesh hit flesh and his mother whimpered, but Frank was feeling better. “That’s more like it,” he was saying and Daegan imagined him doing all sorts of vile things to his mother. “See, honey, oh, God, that’s it…oh God.” The springs began to creak, faster and faster.

“No!” he yelled, but his voice was only a whisper and he felt impotent, unable to help the woman who had brought him into the world. Gritting his bloody teeth, Daegan wrapped sticky fingers around the gun and dragged it from its hiding place, then crawled painstakingly across the floor.

The bedroom door wasn’t locked, and still on all fours, he willed himself into the room and saw his father half-dressed and grunting, rutting like an enraged animal atop his mother. Her best green dress was in tatters, tears stood in her eyes, and her face was already starting to bruise where he’d hit her. Using the door frame for support, Daegan pulled himself upright, standing on legs that threatened to give way. He caught a glimpse of the pain in her face, of the feeling of hopelessness that was her life just before she glanced in his direction.

“Daegan, no!”

Frank stiffened. “What the hell?”

She let out a scream that echoed through the room.

Frank twisted so that he could see the doorway and Daegan, sagging against the frame, the gun shaking in his fingers. Fear jelled his father’s features. “Jesus Christ, kid, what’d’ya think you’re doin’?” He started to scramble off the bed.

Someone pounded on the front door. “Hey—what’s going on in there?” a loud male voice demanded.

Mary Ellen grabbed the comforter covering her breasts. “Daegan, don’t, put that down—” she shrieked, sliding to the floor in a tangle of bed sheets. “NO!”

Daegan squeezed the trigger.

Bam!

The gunshot blasted through the apartment.

Frank dove off the mattress. The bullet zinged past his head and wood splintered in the old oak headboard of Mary Ellen O’Rourke’s double bed.

Frank hit the floor with a thud, his eyes wild with terror, his legs tangled in sweat-soaked sheets.

Mary Ellen wailed.

Someone pounded on the front door. “Hey—hey! What’s going on in there? Cy, call the goddamned police! Hey, are you all right in there? Mary Ellen? Mary Ellen!”

Frank tried to roll his huge body behind the bureau. “For the love of God, woman, get him to stop!” His eyes widened as he stared at Daegan. “Don’t do it boy! Make him stop! Jesus, Mary Ellen, make him stop before he kills us all.”

“Hey! Miss O’Rourke, what’s going on in there? Are you okay?” Voices outside, more of them.

“Oh, shit!” Frank yelled. “Sounds like the goddamned Fourth Battalion!”

His mother was shaking on the bed, holding the tattered quilt around her, crying in wretched, incoherent sobs. Daegan took a step toward her but her lips curled back in disgust. Frank was dragging himself to his feet. “I should have you up on charges!”

“NO!” Mary Ellen cried.

In the living room there was the sound of an axe ripping through wood.

“Oh, God, now what?” Frank zipped his pants and looked furtively to a window.

In the distance sirens began to scream.

“Shit, what a mess.”

“The police,” Mary Ellen whispered.

“I gotta get out of here.”

Crash! The lock gave way. Footsteps on the stairs. Daegan glared at his father and for the first time realized that his eyes were hot and wet with tears. “You sick bastard, you leave my mother alone.”

“No, Frank, don’t leave,” Mary Ellen cried, a huddled, pathetic woman shamed by all who loved her.

Mike O’Brien, a big, strapping man with thick red hair and beard, strode into the room. Bouncer for the Cat O’Nine Tails, he was used to outbursts, brawls, knife fights, and even an occasional gunshot. “For the love of Saint Peter, what happened here?” Meaty hands planted on his hips, he raked his gaze across the mess that had been Mary Ellen’s bedroom, only to stop when he saw Frank cowering in the corner. “Well, if it ain’t Mr. Uptown. Looks like ye found yerself a helluva mess this time and you—” He turned to glare at Daegan. “What were ye thinkin’, eh, boy?”

A siren split the night and Frank was sweating. “I can’t have the police involved. If Robert finds out—”

“Shakin’ in yer boots, are ye?” Mike laid a big hand on Daegan’s shoulder. “Too bad ye missed, son,” he said as he strode to the closet door, ripped down Mary Ellen’s chenille robe, and tossed it to her. “Better get yerself dressed, Mary girl. I think ye got some explainin’ to do. You, too, ye sorry bastard,” he added to Frank, then shooed everyone out of the room to allow Mary Ellen a little privacy. There was a crowd gathered in the living room. Gawkers from the bar downstairs. Soon, the police, weapons drawn, raced up the stairs.

Daegan, his face swollen, his head thundering, dropped onto the couch that was his bed. The second he’d pulled the trigger, he’d experienced a personal epiphany. He’d wanted to kill or maim his father, but he’d missed. In a heartbeat he realized how he’d nearly ruined his life as well as his mother’s. If he’d killed the tyrant, he would have ended up in jail and Mary Ellen O’Rourke would have been kicked into the street.

No charges were ever filed. Frank swallowed his pride and called his brother. Thirty minutes later, at two in the morning, Robert Sullivan swooped in wearing a three-piece suit, starched shirt, and impeccable tie. His hair, salt and pepper, was neatly trimmed and combed. He even smelled of expensive aftershave. All business, he observed his brother through frosty eyes and acted civil to Mary Ellen and Daegan only for the policemen’s benefit. A criminal lawyer, as oily as the eels pulled out of the bay, accompanied him.

As Mary Ellen smoked and answered questions in her softest voice, Robert was encouraging and kind; he even offered Daegan a sympathetic smile, but all the while, Daegan suspected, he was manipulating everyone in the room. Using his friendly, let’s just-keep-this-little-disagreement-between-us-friends smooth talk and his deep pockets, he handled the police and the onlookers.

Dazed, his head throbbing, Daegan heard words exchanged. Robert’s low voice was filled with concern for all involved. He shook his head and Daegan only caught a few of his words. “Unfortunate misunderstanding…accident…a tragic miscommunication that we should all forget…the poor boy. Growing up…well, you know. Thankfully nothing was seriously damaged.”

Cash was quietly slipped to the police and a few others, including Mike O’Brien, who looked as if he didn’t want to take the hundred-dollar bill being offered, but ended up tempted by greed. With an embarrassed glance at Mary Ellen, Mike tucked the folded bill into the deep pockets of his sturdy overalls.

Still shaking inside, Daegan knew instinctively that he’d crossed an invisible moral line. When he’d picked up the .38, he’d shaken off his shackles of childhood and become an adult. Never again would he live the way he had.

From now on, he was on his own. He would pave his own way, play by his own rules, and disregard all the heretofore time-honored dictates of God, country, mother, and the Family Sullivan. He was his own man, able to level a gun at his father, ready to take the consequences for his actions.

After the police and Frank, escorted by a silently seething Robert, left, Daegan began to pack. Mary Ellen didn’t even try to stop him, just sat in a chair at the kitchen table, smoked, and watched him with wide, wounded eyes. She looked old and haggard, her hair mussed, her makeup long since faded. Her legs straddled the corner of her chair and Daegan noticed that her once slim ankles had begun to thicken from years of hard work, age, and the inevitable effects of gravity.

She played with her cigarette, rolling the tip around in an old ashtray he’d won for her at a county fair by shooting wooden ducks in an arcade. Somewhere along the way, thankfully, his aim had lessened and he hadn’t killed Frank. It seemed as if Mary Ellen was fresh out of tears, but as he hefted his duffle bag to his shoulder and looked at her one last time, she swallowed hard, her lips folding in on themselves.

“I’ll call.”

“Sure.” Defeat edged her words.

“I will.”

She didn’t believe him—he could read it in her eyes though her mind wasn’t open to him. Her shoulders drooped and he guessed that she was still in shock that he’d tried to kill the man she loved. When he touched her lightly on the shoulder, she closed her eyes and clenched her jaw. As he brushed a kiss across her cheek she let out a soft little moan of dismay, but she didn’t reach for him. On wooden legs he walked out the broken door that Mike O’Brien had fixed with old plywood.

Unbelievable.

Daegan O’Rourke had attempted the unthinkable, a crime against a Sullivan.

Attempted murder.

Although no word had leaked out officially, murmurings of the bullet fired by O’Rourke had rasped through the hallowed halls of the Sullivan estates and stately townhomes. The buzz was that the bastard boy had a violent temper. A shot had exploded in the night, the bullet narrowly missing Frank Sullivan.

A close call. Far too close, but then again that bastard boy had always exuded trouble.

Too bad the shooter couldn’t have been arrested. It would be such a relief to have him behind bars and out of their faces for ten or twenty years, though it wasn’t possible. If Frank had to testify at trial, the fact that Daegan was his bastard son would inevitably be revealed, leading to a conundrum far worse than having the shooter listed as a runaway.

Still, it was ludicrous,
so wrong
that a person who didn’t belong, a boy who had no right to be near the Sullivans, could wield so much power. The power to embarrass. The power to intrude. The power to kill. One could only hope that Daegan had learned his lesson, that he wouldn’t tangle with the likes of Frank Sullivan anymore.

And so far so good. According to family scuttlebutt, O’Rourke was into the wind, missing since the incident. Not that anyone was beating bushes trying to find him. His own mother, Mary Ellen O’Rourke, the only person who seemed to care one iota, seemed to accept that he was gone for good. Gone far, far away from Boston and the world of trouble that would be his if he insinuated himself into this family again.

Why don’t you just drop off the face of the planet, Daegan? Make it easy on all of us and just disappear?

Daegen spent the first night sleeping behind a Dumpster, the next in an alley near Shorty’s. Cold, dirty, tired, and filled with a burning hatred for the man who had created him, he kept walking around the south side of Boston. After nearly a week on the streets, huddled in doorways or unlocked cars, spending what little money he had on one meal a day, he found an apartment over a service station where the owner, a rotund man with piglike jowls and beefy hands, eyed Daegan and decided to let him pump gas in trade for his rent.

Counting himself lucky, Daegan managed to juggle his hours, still putting in a forty-hour week at the fuel company, but not having much time for school. He managed to scrape up enough credits to graduate and the State of Massachusetts handed him a diploma. He could almost hear the nuns who had been his teachers sigh in collective relief that he was out of the revered educational system.

To keep things simple, Daegan didn’t see his mother, or Frank, or anyone from the family besides Bibi. Not that he wanted her around, either. But she was a stubborn thing, and for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom, she found him interesting. Daegan figured it was some kind of sicko guilt complex or fascination with the black sheep of the family.

“I don’t think this is healthy,” he told her when she tracked him down from work and showed up at his dingy apartment soon after he’d moved in.

“Why not?”

He’d unpacked his old duffle bag, and the few clothes he owned were strewn on the stained mattress. “I don’t like feeling like some freakin’ animal in a sideshow.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

He raised a disbelieving eyebrow. She was standing just inside the door eyeing the place as if she thought it needed dousing with disinfectant, which wasn’t too far from the truth. Time-worn varnish on the door. The windowsills had peeled, exposing old wood. Yellowed linoleum that looked like it was laid in the twenties was cracked and curling at the corners, and the sink, shower, and toilet were darkened by rings and rivulets of rust.

The Ritz it wasn’t, but it would do. For now.

“Okay,” he said, sitting on the edge of the mattress, exposed box springs squeaking in protest. “Enlighten me, why are you here?”

“You don’t have to ridicule me. Believe me, that I can get at home.” Strolling into the room like she owned the place, she reached into the large bag she was carrying and withdrew a bottle of champagne. “I thought we should celebrate your freedom.”

“With that?” he asked dubiously.

“Compliments of my father,” she said as she dropped the bottle on one of the grimy counters.

“Uncle Robert sent it?” He didn’t bother hiding the sarcasm in his voice. He really didn’t understand what Bibi’s fascination with him was and yet the street ran two ways; though he was loath to admit it, he was intrigued by her and everything she represented.

“Well, he doesn’t really know. I sort of borrowed it.”

“And how are you going to sort of give it back?”

“I’m not. I figure he owes me.” She peeled off the foil. “Got any glasses?”

He just stared at her and she lifted a shoulder. “I guess not.”

“Crystal isn’t a top priority.”

“Fine.” She bit into her lower lip as she worked the cork from the neck of the bottle with supple fingers. Pop! The cork rocketed across the room and frothy champagne slid down the green neck of the bottle. “Here. You first,” she said, holding her prize out to him.

Staring up at her, he grabbed the bottle and took a long pull. Why not? She was here. He’d never tasted hundred-dollar-a-bottle booze in his life and there was nothing stopping him. He handed the champagne back to her and watched as she held the bottle up and sucked, her long neck working.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” she said, eyes bright.

“It’s okay.”

Her laughter filled the rat hole of an apartment. “More than okay. It’s divine.”

“God might not agree.” He took a long swallow. Effervescent wine slid down his throat. Something told him he was being foolish, consorting with the enemy, going to end up detesting these few happy minutes for the rest of his life, but he ignored the warning and enjoyed himself for the first time in weeks.

They drank until there was nothing left and she, seated beside him on the tattered mattress, held the bottle upside down and caught the last drop on her tongue. “Ah, well, all good things have to come to an end.”

“So they say.” He was feeling a little lightheaded but he wouldn’t admit it. When he looked at her, she was prettier than he’d originally thought. Sleek hair, wicked little I-know-what-you’re-thinking smile that curved her full lips and large eyes capable of turning a dark shade of blue.

“Gotta run,” she said as she glanced at her watch. “But I’ll be back.”

“Will you?”

“Umm.” Nodding, she fished in her bag, found a tube of lipstick, and painted her mouth a glossy shade of plum. “If you’ll let me.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why not?” she asked innocently, eyes round, eyebrows elevated.

“I don’t trust you.”

She looked wounded. “Why not?”

Flopping back on the mattress, he sighed. “Figure it out, Bibi. Your last name’s Sullivan.”

Stuart wanted to lash out and at anyone for anything! Rage stormed through his bloodstream and he let out a string of oaths that would have sent his mother right to her grave. All because of his sister, his damned, fool-hardy, let’s-dance-with-the-devil sister!

Bibi was out of her mind! No two ways about it. She wouldn’t leave O’Rourke alone. Stuart had kicked himself a thousand times over for getting involved, but now the damage was done. She was enthralled by the bastard.